The Indian trio of Tarundeep Rai, Dhiraj Bommadevara and Pravin Jadhav confirmed a medal, storming into the men’s recurve final of the Archery World Cup Stage 1 in Shanghai on Thursday.
The team, which qualified behind reigning world and Olympic champion South Korea, sailed past Italy 5-1 (55-54, 55-55, 56-55) without dropping a set to set up a summit clash against the top-seeded Koreans.
India will be up against the Korean Tokyo Olympics gold medal winning trio of Kim Woojin, Lee Woo Seok and Kim Je Deok in the gold medal clash slated on Sunday.
The top-seeded Korean trio defeated their Chinese Taipei rivals Tan Chih-Chun, Lin Zih-Siang and Tai Yu-Hsuan in straight sets 6-0 (57-50, 58-56, 58-54).
Earlier, having got a first round bye in the season-opening tournament, the second-seeded Indians overcame a first set deficit to beat 15th seeded Indonesia 5-3 (55-56, 54-54, 55-51, 55-53) in their tricky opening clash.
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They were back to their best against seventh-seeded Spain as they began by dropping just one point (59 out of 60) before cruising to a 5-1 (59-54, 56-55, 55-55) win to make the semifinals.
The Indian women’s team of Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and Bhajan Kaur, which got the sixth rank in the qualifiers, had a below-par show and lost a 3-1 lead to go down to Mexico in its opening clash.
Having got a bye in the first round, the Indian women’s team enjoyed a 3-1 lead in the second set. But their scores were below-par as they lost 3-5 (50-50, 55-49, 51-54, 52-54).
They hit twice in the red ring 7 in the opening set, while in the third set they dropped down to sixth ring and managed two eights in the final set.
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